Grief doesn't arrive on schedule. Sometimes it shows up in a Walmart parking lot, in a phone notification or in the fleeting hope that someone you've lost might still be here.
I nearly stopped in my tracks this week when I saw Bev cleaning the back window of her vehicle in a Walmart parking lot. Only, it wasn’t Bev. But the woman had the same haircut and same build as Bev, Shawn’s (my dear friend) mom.
Bev died in 2021 after a brutal battle with cancer. It hit Shawn hard. In his grief, he didn’t think he’d be able to greet people at Bev’s memorial. Somehow, though, he did. Little did we know that Shawn would pass away unexpectedly in 2022, and the rest of us would be standing in that same room, wondering how we’d greet each other.
A few days prior, I got a notification on my phone that said Shawn had joined an app I use to communicate with a few friends. On the surface, I knew that meant someone else had been assigned his phone number and the app was checking it against my contacts (I can never bring myself to delete contact information after someone I know dies), matching it with his information. At the gut level, it hurt … because for the briefest of seconds, I had hope that made his unexpected death was just a big misunderstanding.
That made it a triple whammy in one day. Bev. Linda. Shawn.
Grief isn’t linear. Three losses don’t equal three times the same amount of pain. Each loss lands differently and at the oddest of times.
After losing someone, once vivid memories promise to always be readily accessible. But that vividness gets eroded over time. And the less vivid memories – the moments that didn’t seem all that memorable at the time – peek through the cracks and scream, “Hold on. Please, hold on.”
But grief has taught me that holding on is both necessary and futile. Still, I try – in parking lots, in notifications, in the ache of recognition. Not because it works, but because some part of me isn’t ready to stop trying. And I hope I never reach the point when I am.
